Bill Jamieson: We've gone from malice in bunkerland to Alice in Wonderland

Published on Tuesday 11 May 2010 23:24

DEAL, no deal; deal with Labour, no deal; first deal back on again: our heads are so spun we've forgotten the plot. Why do any of them want to be the government?

It was the proud boast of the White Queen in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland that "sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast". I'm fast losing count of all the impossible things I've been asked to believe this past week.

Take the notion of a "progressive alliance" that Gordon Brown held out as offering stable and lasting government. Such a Liquorice Allsorts confection of five different parties was just not credible as a serious government and would have been destined for a hail of derision whenever it tried to assert itself. It only existed as an anti-Conservative front. Running the country is something else.

Or take the word "progressive" which the Allsorts seized upon to legitimise their combination and coat their endeavour with some sense of fraternal fair-mindedness.

There was nothing "progressive" or fair-minded about it. The first concern of the SNP, Plaid Cymru and Ulster MPs taking part was to gain more money for their nations and regions at the expense of England (which deserved to be punished for voting Conservative).

This wasn't "progressive". It was a nakedly sectional, beggar-my-neighbour agenda.

And was Mr Alex Salmond seriously asking us to believe he would now be Gordon Brown's best friend, or whoever Labour selects to replace him? What of the mutual loathing between Labour and the SNP in the Scottish parliament? This was the nearest thing Scottish politics has come to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

Ah, but election reform: is this not progressive and long overdue? It would certainly look progressive to those who like their government settled on the basis of horse-trading and backdoor deals and which would in the process deliver the British National Party ten Westminster seats – possibly more than the SNP.

But then we were also asked to believe those solemn utterances from the party spokesmen that they were putting the nation first. So, of the overriding concerns – a pending collapse of international confidence in the UK economy over the budget deficit and electoral reform – which concern most preoccupied the discussions and "put the nation first"? Why, voting reform of course.

Now we are being asked to believe in the staying power of a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition. But there are three really impossible things about this.

First, the Lib Dems are a party of the Left. They have seriously different views from the Tories on matters from Europe to welfare. Second, there is no shared view on the issue of immediate steps to tackle the budget deficit. And third, the Lib Dems are themselves a coalition, a constantly shaken kaleidoscope of viewpoints and opinions, different from whichever angle you look.

Former home secretary John Reid saw the danger signs for Labour in what lies ahead and urged withdrawal, a stance akin to withdrawing to the other side of the Vistula as the Germans and the Poles go hammer and tongs.

But at least The Deal gets us past the gridlock. For this most basic, minimal progression it should be welcomed.

But come the autumn, with the debt and the debt interest piling up, the unions taking action against cuts, the nationalists sharing the opposition lines with Labour to fight "draconian attacks on public spending", and an accelerating flight of capital out of the UK, whoever wishes to take on this crisis will need a mandate to govern.

Which brings us back to where we began and to that very first question: who seriously wishes to take this on – and expect us to believe it before breakfast?